As apartments, department stores and large shopping malls are concentrated in cities, parking in cities is becoming more problematic. In particular, it is typical to design high buildings to have underground parking lots since they lack ground areas that can be used as parking lots.
In order to efficiently manage such underground parking lots, it is required to provide a service of introducing a vehicle that enters through the entrance of a parking lot to a vacant parking area, notifying the position of a parked vehicle to a vehicle owner by recognizing the registration number of the parked vehicle, or the like.
According to a current parking management system, parking concierges find vacant parking areas or the like by moving about the parking lot and guide a vehicle which has just entered the parking lot to a vacant parking area. In this system, however, significant labor is required and it is difficult to inspect and manage a number of parking areas. There is a method of installing sensors and/or cameras in each parking area in order to determine whether or not each parking area is vacant and recognize the registration number of a parked vehicle. However, installation is not easy and installation cost is expensive, which are problematic.
In order to reliably run a camera module which runs on a rail, the problem of supplying power to the camera module must be overcome. When the power is supplied through chords, the distribution of wires becomes complicated since the rail is long. It is also difficult to properly operate the camera using a small driving device such as a small motor.
The information disclosed in the Background section is only for the enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and should not be taken as an acknowledgment or any form of suggestion that this information comprises prior art that would already be known to a person skilled in the art.